Rob,
We already allow arbitrary extension by foreign elements and attributes
and you offer no examples of actual "evil" use of them with ODF.
Moreover, careful readers will note that ODF 1.2 allows *arbitrary*
extension by its new metadata mechanism.
Why? Well, because no standards committee, not even ours, can anticipate
every need of every user. So from the very beginning ODF has allowed
several mechanisms for arbitrary extension of the defined markup.
Florian on our last call, had a good use case for older ODF applications
to process later ODF documents, whose new elements and atttibutes are
"foreign" to them.
BTW, ODF and markup technologies are *not* religious issues and so
differences in markup choices are not "evil." I already have a religion,
one that has existed a good bit longer than markup technologies and I am
not in the market for a new one. I think it would help if we all simply
try to do the best jobs we can and not view markup, including ODF,
through lens of good versus evil.
Granted I have labored over ODF for years, both as a volunteer and more
recently as a paid editor and I prefer its choices over other possible
choices. That's understandable. What I refuse to do is to brand other
choices as "evil" or somehow beyond the pale. If our choices are the
better ones, and I certainly think they are, then we should be able to
demonstrate that to others. Note I said demonstrate, not simply shout it
at others. There is a difference.
And yes, yes, others may refuse to listen or persist in disagreeing.
That is certainly their privilege. As I have pointed out in another
context, listening should not be equated with agreement. I can listen
quite attentively and still disagree in a civil manner.
Hope you are having a great day!
Patrick
robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> Some specific examples of how and why arbitrary proprietary extensions
> are evil.
>
> Two common concerns with users is the need for privacy and security.
> The issue of personally-identifying meta-data is increasingly in the
> news. Some products, like Microsoft Office, have a built-in operation
> that will remove such information from a Word document. There are
> also third-party application that will strip such metadata from a
> document.
>
> So, suppose you want to write such an operation for an ODF document..
> What do you do? Simple enough, look to meta.xml scrub extension
> elements under